Tag Archives: salvation

Antacid

dictionary with letter A

Antacid: (n.) a preventative to correct acidity, usually in the stomach.

All of us human mortals suffer from some form of “wimp factor.”

It’s not easy to admit, especially if you’re preoccupied with the notion of appearing macho or self-reliant.

But honestly, one of the more endearing factors about being a part of this race is that when we get candid with one another about our foolishness and silliness, we can really be quite charming.

I think the first time I was consciously aware of having a bad case of indigestion was in my early twenties. I had never even considered antacid or assistance of any sort for my digestive tract.

Being a silly goose, I assumed that the rumblings in my chest were the onset of a heart attack. Even though it would be unusual for anyone of my age to be plagued by such a tragedy, I convinced myself that I was the exception to the rule, and rather than having ingested a very greasy piece of smoked sausage, I had clogged up an artery which was trying to keep me from breathing.

So every time I felt the little twinge of pain, I frantically took deep breaths to make sure I would maintain consciousness, and in doing so hyperventilated, only increasing my worry, which led to having an anxiety attack–which, by the way, feels similar to the heart variety.

It was so silly–especially when I found myself in an emergency room and they poured out some white liquid in a small cup, and I asked them if it was for my heart. The nurse calmly replied, “No. It’s Di-gel. For your belly ache.”

I only spent half an hour there, and received some giggles from the attending physician, who told me that if I didn’t lose weight, I probably would be in there with a heart attack in thirty years or so, but I was safe for the time being.

I know there are people who have to use antacids all the time, but basically, if you don’t eat too much fatty food while also consuming large amounts of fluid, you can usually avoid gastric distress.

And if you do happen to have a twinge in your belly that radiates up into your chest, don’t immediately assume that you’re dying.

You are one belch away from salvation.

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Thank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix

Annotate

dictionary with letter A

Annotate: (v) to add notes of explanation to a text or diagram

It is my contention that education is knowledge followed by experience. It can even be experience that gradually garners knowledge.

But the idea that the more information imparted to us, with a variety of opinions, insights, notes, complete with bibliography, will make us smarter, is a bit erroneous.

I’m not so sure we learn until we take something that we kind of basically understand–and then try it ourselves.

Does anyone really become an engineer when they graduate from college, or does that actually occur some Thursday morning three years later, while working on the job?

I think this is particularly annoying in the fields of business and religion. So many books, commentaries, opinions and guides for the novice are penned in these categories, with the aspiration that an insight from someone other than ourselves will give us an edge.

Of course, we need to know what we’re talking about, and have a basic understanding of what we’re doing. But candidly, it is in the handling of circumstance and difficulty that we discover the true wisdom of each and every endeavor.

I grow weary of a culture that creates a learning class, which receives more finance than a working class that actually pulls the load. And not only finance–but status.

Case in point:

  • I studied music. It didn’t make me a musician. Somewhere in my third set, playing keyboard in a dive, discovering a new bridge chord, I gained the confidence to have the music in me.
  • I studied the Bible. It didn’t make me a Christian. It was a series of encounters, where I chose to think for myself and selected to bless instead of curse, when the mind of Christ actually inhabited my cranium.
  • I even studied sex in an attempt to become a better lover, but it was on the 121st attempt to please my partner through sensitivity that I actually had the words “Don Juan” whispered in my ear.

Notes are good. Testimonies are interesting.

But none of us are saved by someone else’s experience. The salvation of our lives … is the word of our own testimony.

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Anew

dictionary with letter A

Anew: (adv.) in a different and typically more positive way or method.

Perhaps it is an entire field of study–discovering the difference between anew and recycled.

Because I am frequently inundated with ideas, proposals and even art which people insist is fresh and innovative that I have not only seen before but have actually performed.

What does it take to make something truly anew? The question is so baffling that some folks take the Solomon approach and begin to insist that there IS nothing new under the sun.

But I am much less jaded and very hopeful that not only can “anew” be discovered, but if I’m willing, I can possibly find myself being a conduit to birthing freshness.

I can think of three things that open the door to starting anew:

1. Confronting your fear.

Most original ideas are smothered somewhere between the brain and the tongue. People are frightened of being too different or too weird.

2. Understanding what’s needed instead of just what’s wanted.

There are things that human beings desire which are contrary to the common good. There are other things we repel which in the long run, not only cuddle us in confidence, but nourish us to salvation.

3. Try it.

Yes, there is a power in just experimenting with freshly hatched notions instead of wearing them out with continual discussion, voting and indecision.

I think it is possible for us to start anew instead of just recycling old ideas. But to do so, we will have to allow ourselves the expression of our soul without editing, and forgive ourselves when later abridging or expansion becomes necessary.

 

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Andrew, St.

dictionary with letter A

Andrew, St.: An apostle, the brother of St. Peter. He is associated with the X-shaped cross because he is said to have been crucified on such a cross, and is the patron saint of Russia and Scotland. Feast Day, November 30.

Long before he was nailed down on a multiplication symbol and they started a special holiday in his honor, Andrew was a fisherman in a little town called Capernaum.

His prospects for being prosperous or well-known and his aptitude for upward mobility were less than promising–actually, comical.

Living in a village of less than five hundred people and a partner in a business in which his brother, with a more boisterous personality, took over the entire room, Andrew had little chance of surfacing socially, or even generating a jot and tittle in a history book.

Yet he possessed one powerful personality trait–he was curious.

While his brother probably took the time to sleep off the latest fishing jaunt, which included heavy wine drinking, Andrew was out and about, looking for possibilities. In the process, he met another unlikely earth-shaker named Jesus of Nazareth.

We don’t know why Andrew was impressed or why he was so moved by the Nazarene’s message. But we do know that he was one of Jesus’ early followers, and ends up bringing his brother to the cause.

As often is the case, there is no Peter without Andrew. There are no five loaves and two fishes for the five thousand fed without Andrew bringing the little boy’s lunch for consideration.

And even though after all the smoke cleared of the posturing and shuffling, he did not end up being one of the inner-three best friends of Jesus (positions held by Peter, James and John), we are never made aware that he is slighted or offended in the least.

He did three things that gave him personal salvation and a place for all time:

  1. He stayed interested.
  2. When he found something important, he got excited.
  3. He stuck with it to the end.

In many ways Andrew is the hero of the gospel story simply because he brought the right people at the right time … to the right person.

 

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Alleviate

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Alleviate: (v) to make suffering, deficiency or a problem less severe: e.g. he took measures to alleviate unemployment

You usually can tap a tear or draw a cheer by speaking against the evils of pain, poverty and suffering. And certainly, these nasty villains have crushing results on the weakest members of our society.

But I think you are often trying to treat the rash on your skin caused by the tumor in your heart. What we need to alleviate in order to improve the status and quality of life are:

  • Piety
  • Politics
  • Prejudice

They are the spawners of all pond scum, and therefore should be attacked for their vicious planning of the destruction of mankind.

In one stroke, piety makes us feel better than others and worse than God. It leaves us uncertain of our value, falling into a pit of pomposity to try to prove our worthiness for salvation.

Politics is the band-aid for the gaping wound which pretends to repair the breach, only to welcome deeper and deeper levels of infection.

And of course, prejudice targets an enemy who has done nothing to us other than being different, so that we might promote our own singularity as superior. It is the nastiest form of insecurity available in the arsenal of human weaponry.

Would we have war without politics, religion and prejudice?

Would there be hungry people if politicians, religionists and bigots weren’t restricting the flow of charity?

Would there be suffering if politicians were actually addressing the needs of society, churches were spreading the blanket of Jesus’ love to “the least of these,” and prejudice was dissolved and a liquidity of acceptance was poured forth?

Alleviate. Yes, I believe my job as a human being in the twenty-first century is to lessen the effect of piety, politics and prejudice, on the mind and heart of the common man.

In so doing, I will find that less pain, poverty and suffering will afflict the strangers–now acquaintances–around me.

 

Afterlife

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter AAfterlife: (prep) 1. life after death 2. later life e.g. they spent most of their afterlife trying to forget the fire.

There is a certain presumption to the idea of heaven which often makes me uncomfortable. It’s this notorious notion that we can live a meager existence, fraught with fault, indecision and selfishness, and because God in heaven has granted us salvation, we will suddenly be translated into eternal, enlightened creatures.

I always wonder what people would think if heaven ended up just being their life–except maybe moving it to Hawaii. In other words, just a little better surroundings, but you bring your furniture.

What if heaven is not a relief of our pain, but instead, an individualized celebration of our discoveries on Earth? What if the misery we have claimed as our own is not alleviated, but instead, continued–just surrounded by hula girls and beaches?

Would the change in surroundings be enough to make us enjoy our choices better?

It’s confounding–because everything on earth works with a delicate balance of effort, patience and grace.

  • Effort in the sense that I actually show up and do my best
  • Patience because good things sometimes take a while
  • And grace because God, in His mercy, grants it to those who are truly humble

How can there be an afterlife if there wasn’t first a life?

If we offer a meager resume to the heavenly corporation, why do we think we are up for a promotion?

Well, you can believe what you want to believe. I think there’s a four-step process to making a life which would make any kind of afterlife absolutely delectable:

  1. Find what you can do.
  2. Do it well.
  3. Get better
  4. Help somebody.

This is the life I choose–and if I were asked to continue it in another place … I would be overjoyed to do so.

 

Advent

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Advent: (n) the first season of the church year, leading up to Christmas and including the four prior Sundays.

Even with the introduction of an Easter bunny bringing candy, we are not able to market the crucifixion and resurrection nearly as easily as the birth of the Prince of Peace.

I suppose that makes some people fussy. They would be the same people who insist that “Christmas is too commercial” or that manger scenes should be mandatory everywhere in spite of civil liberties.

Actually, I take this little piece of information as a harkening. Isn’t that a great word? “Harkening.” A harkening is a quiet shout, informing us of something truly important.

Much as we may need salvation, we are still doing our time on earth before we’re paroled to heaven. Like some people in prison, we can use that sentence to become worse criminals, mean and even turn into killers–OR we can go to the library, study and get more education, find new life and emerge from the experience overjoyed because we have redeemed the time.

I think that’s what happens at Advent.

For about thirty-two days, we allow ourselves to wonder if it might be possible that a baby changed the world–and more importantly, caused us to loosen our purse strings, buy a present for someone else and think about abstract ideas like “peace on earth” and “goodwill toward men.”

If heaven is better than earth, then earth is a place where we’re supposed to learn how to become heavenly, don’t you think?

So merely saving people from their sin does not cause them to learn to win.

  • That takes the Advent.
  • This demands Christmas.

It is a season when we actually believe that a child born of peasants can stir the heavens, beckoning both shepherds and kings.

Acedia

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Acedia: (n.) a spiritual or mental sloth; apathy.

The problem with religion is that it often deadens people’s instincts to be expansive and will to excel.

The difficulty with atheism is that it launches a soul on a sea, fostering such loneliness that the end result is despair.

Yet a life without spirit is asking the emotions and the brain to peacefully co-exist in three square feet of skin, never meant to contain such revolution.

The human spirit is meant to be aflame with passion, so as to referee the continuing struggle between that which we feel, that which we think and ultimately, that which we do.

Anything that comes along to create apathy, despondency and hopelessness is an enemy of those who are adorned with such great intelligence by the Creator that it affords them the authority to walk as supreme on earth.

So how can we have enough God without becoming religious and enough questioning without being plagued by our own nagging agnosticism?

It is perhaps the greatest question that faces all humankind–and even though it may occasionally cause us to run away in horror, we must realize that the payoff for finding such a treasure of balanced expression is worth every single moment of turmoil.

Don’t give up on God, who never gave up on you–and in the process you’ll never give up on people.

Fight the tendency to go numb. Endure a little pain to welcome the pleasure … of a soaring salvation.

 

Abeokuta

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Abeokuta: a city in southwestern Nigeria, capital of the state of Ogun; pop. 308,800

You see, all he wanted to do was give out Bibles to natives. He certainly wasn’t interested in acquiring finance. His only concern was to provide the Word of God to lost souls in Nigeria who did not have any way of learning the truth of the salvation plan because they lacked a book to explain it to them.

He wrote me a lengthy letter to share his vision and also reinforce his credentials, listing numerous universities and organizations which were most definitely acquainted with his passion.

I was about eight or nine long paragraphs into this plea from Africa, when suddenly my the writer pointed out to me that even though he was not interested in money, a certain amount of cash would be necessary–along with the shipment of Bibles–as a tariff on all products from America, even if they were in black covers stamped with the word “Holy.”

So along with sending him a hundred Bibles, it would be necessary for me to include a wire transfer of $250 to cover those taxes and charges, so as to ensure that some desperately befuddled Nigerian would receive illumination from on high.

As a courtesy, he included the procedure by which I should transfer these funds–as soon as possible–even before the Bibles were shipped! After all, who knows when the monies would  be needed?

I do believe he was from Abeokuta.

I must confess to you, heathen that I am, I passed on this remarkable opportunity, kept my bank account intact and was forced to resort to a simple prayer for all those potentially damned Nigerians, who would be vacant of redemption due to the absence of my Bible shipment.

Such events do not make me cynical. They actually serve to make me more voracious in my appetite to find the authentic.